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Steam can't escape the fallout from its censorship controversy

polygon.com

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Re: Steam can't escape the fallout from its censorship controversy

#131

Post by Forgeties79 »

diath wrote: post #118
kasey_junk wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are 3 issues being commingled within this. First, the networks have brand protection stipulations for any partner that uses the network. None of them want to be known as the porn brand. Second, porn (and other similar categories) have a different risk profile than other charges. Specifically chargeback risk goes through the roof. None of the members of the network want to deal with sales of things that spike ch…

Considering the fact that these payment processors are still happily processing payments from PornHub, OnlyFans and other big real porn platforms, I don't think your explanation about the networks not wanting to be associated with porn holds any ground. They're targeting video games specifically.

The games they are targeting are primarily pornographic. It unfortunately was used to also cast a wider net. But at its core that is exactly the content that was being brought up.

Re: Steam can't escape the fallout from its censorship controversy

#132

Post by overfeed »

immibis wrote: post #37
trenchpilgrim wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more than love - I have friends who will actively refuse to buy games on other stores, even for significantly better prices. (To be fair - I think some stores like the Epic Games store actively make playing games on them worse, e.g. I played Alan Wake 2 through Epic and the achievements notifications were massively distracting, ruining many scary and dramatic moments, and they turn themselves back on every time…

For desktop gaming, GOG should be prioritized above Steam.

For Linux desktop gaming, Steam bests GoG all day, everyday.

Before Valve sponsoring/partnering with Code Weavers on Proton, running anything-but-old-and-stable games via Wine was a fraught affair, now even games that update weekly/monthly run perfectly, without having to fiddle with config files or downloading specific DLLs. For the large and growing library of supported games, Steam made Linux gaming painless.

Re: Steam can't escape the fallout from its censorship controversy

#133

Post by mrguyorama »

qualeed wrote: post #110
mrguyorama wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Steam has also repeatedly shown to be on the side of the consumer Except when they only added any sort of return mechanism after violating consumer rights laws in all sorts of jurisdictions for like a decade. Though that was significantly less painful back in the day when a steam sale was actually meaningful. Steam's pro-consumer-ness is absurdly overblown, but the rest of consumer facing corporations are so fucking…

> back in the day when a steam sale was actually meaningful. Curious what you mean by this?

It used to be normal for steam sales to be somewhat rare and surprising, but the tradeoff was that it was the norm for big and popular games to have staggering discounts.

In 2012, Terraria went on sale for 25 cents. Valve sold the entire Half Life family for like two dollars. AAA and big name games would go for 80% off or more, back when that actually got you a full game without microtransactions or significant DLC to buy.

People got excited about the sales because you might wake up to find the game you really wanted for $60 was now a few dollars.

Objectively "Incredible" deals are a lot less common, and old stuff doesn't have massive discounts anymore, sticking with "just" very good discounts.

Re: Steam can't escape the fallout from its censorship controversy

#134

Post by qualeed »

mrguyorama wrote: post #133
qualeed wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> back in the day when a steam sale was actually meaningful. Curious what you mean by this?

It used to be normal for steam sales to be somewhat rare and surprising, but the tradeoff was that it was the norm for big and popular games to have staggering discounts. In 2012, Terraria went on sale for 25 cents . Valve sold the entire Half Life family for like two dollars. AAA and big name games would go for 80% off or more, back when that actually got you a full game without microtransactions or significant DLC…

I still see some pretty staggering deals now and again, but maybe not to the extent you remember (I don't really remember that, but I was also primarily a WoW player back then, and didn't pay as much attention).

How much of that is to blame on steam vs. the publishers, though? I would imagine the publishers have much more control over (if not total control?) over pricing. So, unless I'm wrong, it seems misguided to put that at steam's feet.

Re: Steam can't escape the fallout from its censorship controversy

#135

Post by [deleted] »

tracker1 wrote: post #63
dizlexic wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm one of those. I have a few reasons. Initially it was just wanting to keep things in one place as much as possible, but as a Linux guy it's morphed into fierce platform loyalty as a way to support Linux gaming.

I think it's entirely fair though. Valve has put a lot of its money where its mouth is on this. I get that it started as a hegemony against Windows' store, but it's been great for the Linux community as a whole. By some metrics, desktop Linux is sitting around 6%, and I think that Valve is almost solely responsible (along with all wine devs) for at least a full 1% of that. It's started to even draw a lot of attention…

[deleted]

Re: Steam can't escape the fallout from its censorship controversy

#136

Post by [deleted] »

J_Shelby_J wrote: post #68
trenchpilgrim wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more than love - I have friends who will actively refuse to buy games on other stores, even for significantly better prices. (To be fair - I think some stores like the Epic Games store actively make playing games on them worse, e.g. I played Alan Wake 2 through Epic and the achievements notifications were massively distracting, ruining many scary and dramatic moments, and they turn themselves back on every time…

It’s because steam is 100% an aberration in our modern world. The closest comparison is, maybe, Costco? And we who are dependent on steam know how bad things would be if steam wasn’t this unicorn. Gaben is the rare feudal lord whose people show up to battle out because they know it’s good for them. All he had to do was not abuse his monopoly for the past 25 years, as the meme goes.

[deleted]

Re: Steam can't escape the fallout from its censorship controversy

#137

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

pjmlp wrote: post #101
Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> OS specific stores Other than my phone, I would never purchase software from an OS-specific store. Why would you ever choose to do that?

Why not? It is already there, has enough choice to keep me entertained, I don't suffer from FOMO.

I try to avoid vendor lock-in when I can.

I'm a Windows user. I don't want to lose my apps if (really, when) I eventually switch to Linux.

Buying my games on Steam means I can play my games anywhere.

Re: Steam can't escape the fallout from its censorship controversy

#138

Post by Ferret7446 »

lupusreal wrote: post #61
maverwa wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who’s using steam daily for probably 50-75% of their lifetime now: I don’t love them, but it’s the lesser evil for sure. Sure, if GOG had even 20% of steams catalog and useability, it be no. 1 without question. But since we‘re sadly limited to this one reality, there is no alternative. XBOX GamePass is a trap I expect to spring every day, Uplay and EA Origin are just a splash screen I see when starting a g…

GOG is great but I'd like them even more if they did some of the wine/proton work that Steam does for Linux users. For the dosbox games at least it's not much to do (for them nor for myself to be fair.) Steam is simultaneously hard to like, as a DRM service, but also hard to dislike as they put so much care into getting games running on Linux and have a very reasonable return policy, full refunds for the game not wor…

To be clear, there are many games on Steam without DRM. It's up to the publisher whether Steam DRM is used or not (or if any other 3rd party DRM is used, for that matter).

I suspect almost all of the games on GoG, if they are also on Steam, also don't have DRM on Steam.

Re: Steam can't escape the fallout from its censorship controversy

#139

Post by tstrimple »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #22
trenchpilgrim wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more than love - I have friends who will actively refuse to buy games on other stores, even for significantly better prices. (To be fair - I think some stores like the Epic Games store actively make playing games on them worse, e.g. I played Alan Wake 2 through Epic and the achievements notifications were massively distracting, ruining many scary and dramatic moments, and they turn themselves back on every time…

Steam is just way better than other stores, because it's not just a store, it's got a bajillion features besides. And now that I have a Steam Deck, this difference is even more stark.

Cloud saves that work reliably and games that support the steam workshop instead of 3rd party mod managers makes a huge difference to me. The reality of putting down a game on my desktop and then starting it up again in the same state on my laptop later that night without me having to do or think about anything across basically every game in their store is amazing. I can spend hours crafting my perfect Dwarf Fortress or RimWorld mod setup and it's just saved and available on every computer I play on.

Re: Steam can't escape the fallout from its censorship controversy

#140

Post by immibis »

rpcope1 wrote: post #84
immibis wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of this has to be about extending credit. People are trying to buy games with money they have. Why do you say credit has to be involved? They could try cash-by-mail, like Mullvad.

What exactly do you think "credit card" means?

Why do you think that buying games necessarily involves a credit card?
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